Artists often describe the recording process as a battle, but for guitarist Peter Buck, making R.E.M.’s unlucky 13th album, Around the Sun, was more like war. A very specific war, in fact, and one the band had publicly criticized for years. “It was kind of like the war in Iraq,” he told SPIN in 2008. “We don’t know why we got in there, we don’t know how to get out, and we don’t know what we’re trying to accomplish.”
That’s a pretty succinct description of how good bands make blah albums—in this case, how one of the most respected bands of the ‘80s and ‘90s created what many consider
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